One of the griefs of living with autism is that it is so terrifyingly easy to lose things – aspects of family life – and generally impossible to get them back. Jack loves films and, until an incident a few years back, this included watching films at the cinema. Our local cinemas did special ‘kid’s club’ showings at reduced prices and Nick took the three children almost every week. I used the uninterrupted chunk of time to fold laundry while listening to Radio 4, soeveryone was happy. Then one week, there was a trailer, for a light-hearted comedy called ‘Night at the Museum’. And the thing is, even though the film is a comedy, the trailer was scary… so, in spite of all encouragement, Jack hasn’t darkened the door of a cinema since. Then a couple of months after we moved to Blackheath, Nick tried to get Jack off the train at Lewisham, where there is a huge gap between the train and the platform, rather than going through to Blackheath, where it is only a few inches. And just like that we lost trains. Yesterday we lost eating in restaurants as a family. Jack has never been that patient with the bit where you are sitting in the restaurant but no food as arrived – and at one point I knew how to say ‘please bring hot chips quickly’ in several different languages – but yesterday it became clear (I won’t go into the painful details) that Jack can no longer tolerate restaurants at all. 🙁